North Dakota Dems Continue To Dominate Republicans In Party Fundraising

Democrats have been dominant at party-level fundraising for the 2014 election cycle so far, but the North Dakota Republican Party outraised the Dems in January.

You can read the latest monthly report, covering January, from the FEC for Republicans here and Democrats here.

In January, Republicans raised $47,679.28, spent $32,978.38 and ended the reporting period with $23,477.95 in cash on hand.

Democrats raised $31,588.86, spent $33,976.58 and ended the reporting period with $30,355.60 in cash on hand.

Still, cycle to date, Democrats are way ahead of where they were in the 2012 cycle, and pulling ahead:

While Republicans are behind where they were in 2012, and the gap is increasing:

Here’s how the two parties are doing compared to one another, 2014 cycle-to-date:

Every time I write one of these posts I get pushback from Republicans pointing out that the NDGOP holds every single statewide elected office (with the exception of one US Senate seat), and each of those incumbents has their own independent campaign committee that dilutes the party’s take. That’s true. But it was also true in the 2012 cycle, and Republicans are behind where they were last time in raising money.

These same Republicans usually claim that Democrats also get most of their money from out of state. While that’s technically true, it’s worth noting that according to numbers from the year-end report for 2013, North Dakota Dems beat Republicans in both in-state and out-of-state fundraising.

And that matters, other Republicans tell me. They worry about the fact that the party has no staff dedicated to working in the Red River Valley, the most populous part of the state where a strong ground game from Democrats was probably the margin of victory on the oh-so-tight Senate race between Heidi Heitkamp and Rick Berg (less than 3,000 votes separated the two). They also worry about what a lack of party funds will do for get-out-the-vote efforts statewide.

Generally speaking, there is a feeling among many Republicans that the state party is addled by apathy. Republicans have “grown so used to winning they think it’s the new normal,” one Republican district-level leader told me last week

If the fundraising numbers are any indication, he’s right.

One big difference is that elected Democrats seem to be more generous in supporting the state party than elected Republicans. Senator Heidi Heitkamp, as well as former Democrat Senators Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan, have donated thousands to their state party (Conrad alone dropped $5,000 in the most recent reporting period).

Senator Hoeven, by comparison, gave just $1,500 to the state party in 2013, while Rep. Kevin Cramer hasn’t logged any contributions that I can find.